The abundant, low-cost production of potent fuels, which can be used in intrinsically clean energy processes, i.e. processes which do not produce and emit greenhouse gases and other pollutants is a challenging task.
Steam reforming is generally used to produce hydrogen from hydrocarbons. Steam reforming of natural gas, sometimes referred to as steam methane reforming (SMR), is the most common method of producing commercial bulk hydrogen, as well as hydrogen, used in the industrial synthesis of ammonia.
The steam reforming of methane and other hydrocarbons (Reaction 1 below), is generally followed by a water shift reaction to convert CO to H2. The syn-gas (i.e. synthetic mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) produced in the reforming process, can also be used as enriched gas fuel, or converted to liquid fuels such as methanol. Methane CH4 can be reformed with steam or carbon dioxide to form a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (syn-gas) as follows:CH4+H2OCO+3H2 ΔH=206.2 kJ/mol  (1)CH4+CO22CO+2H2 ΔH=247.3 kJ/mol  (2)where ΔH is the enthalpy of the reaction. At high temperatures (700-1100° C.) and in the presence of a metal-based catalyst, steam reacts with methane to yield carbon monoxide and hydrogen.